71 terms · 7 topics

Recruitment terms, explained plainly

The words agencies, workers and clients use every day, from pay and charge rates to the UK rules behind them. Explained, not advised.

Browse A to Z

Topics

The business7
The people7
The work11
Money13
Timesheets, pay and bill9
UK compliance terms18
Terms used in Vextron6

The business

Recruitment agency · also staffing agency: A business that finds people for employers, either for permanent jobs or for temporary work.
Employment business: The legal term for an agency that supplies temporary workers who stay the agency’s responsibility while they work for its clients. Most UK temp desks are employment businesses.
Desk: A recruiter’s patch: a sector, a region or a set of clients. For example, ‘an education desk’ or ‘a hospitality desk’.
Perm · also permanent recruitment: Permanent recruitment. The agency introduces a candidate, the client employs them directly, and the agency invoices a one-off fee.
Temp · also temporary staffing: Temporary staffing. The agency pays the worker for the hours or shifts they work, and invoices the client for the same hours at a higher rate.
Contract · also contracting: Longer, fixed-term work, often by professionals, usually paid at a day or hourly rate. Contractors frequently work through their own limited company or through an umbrella company.
Sector · also vertical: The industry a desk serves, such as healthcare, education, industrial or hospitality.

The people

Candidate · also worker, temp: Someone the agency might place in a job. In temp work, they are also called a worker or a temp.
Client · also hirer: The employer the agency supplies people to.
Contact: A named person at a client, such as the hiring manager, the site supervisor or the person who approves timesheets.
Consultant · also recruiter: The person at the agency who works a desk.
Resourcer: A recruiter who focuses on finding candidates rather than winning clients.
Hiring manager: The person at the client who decides who gets hired.
Approver: The person at the client who signs off a temp’s hours.

The work

Vacancy · also job, role: The position being filled. In temp work, the ongoing need is often called a temp job, and each occurrence of it is a shift.
Shift: One occurrence of a temp job: a set period of work for which a worker is needed.
Requisition: A formal request to fill a position. In Vextron, a job is one record showing how many people are needed, rather than a requisition with separate openings.
Pipeline: The named stages a candidate moves through on a job, such as longlist, shortlist, CV sent, interview, offer and placed.; The pipeline in Vextron
Longlist and shortlist · also longlist, shortlist: The longlist is the wide list of possible candidates for a job. The shortlist is the smaller list actually sent to the client.
Placement · also place: The record of someone actually working: a permanent hire or a temp assignment. Also used as a verb: to place someone.
Booking: One worker confirmed for one shift.
Rota: The schedule of who is working which shift, on which day, for which client.
Fill rate: How many of the shifts an agency was asked to cover it actually covered.
No-show: A worker who was booked for a shift and did not turn up. It is tracked as an outcome of its own.
Assignment: The period a temp works for one client in one role.

Money

Pay rate: What the worker is paid per hour, day or shift.
Charge rate: What the client is invoiced for the same time.
Margin · also gross margin, net margin: The charge rate minus the pay rate. Gross margin ignores employment costs; net margin takes them off as well.
On-costs: The employment costs on top of a worker’s pay, such as employer National Insurance, holiday pay as it builds up, pension contributions and, where it applies, the Apprenticeship Levy.
Fee · also placement fee: The one-off charge for a permanent placement, usually a percentage of the candidate’s first-year salary.
Rate card · also rate scheme: The agreed set of pay and charge rates for a client, a role or a type of shift.
Uplift · also premium, enhancement: A higher rate for unsocial hours, such as nights, weekends and bank holidays.
Self-billing: An arrangement where the agency raises the supplier’s invoice on their behalf, instead of waiting for the umbrella company or contractor to send one. It is a formal arrangement under VAT rules.
Tronc: A pooled tips arrangement, shared out among workers. Under the Tips Act 2023, tips pass through to workers in full, with no agency fee, margin or deduction.
Pay run: The regular process of paying everyone who worked in a period.
Invoice run: The regular process of billing every client for the work done in a period.
Aged debt: Invoices that are overdue, grouped by how long they are overdue: for example 30, 60 or 90 days.
Purchase order · also PO: A reference from the client that has to appear on the invoice. Without it, the client’s accounts team may reject the invoice and the payment clock starts again.

Timesheets, pay and bill

Timesheet: The record of what a worker actually worked in a period. The client approves it, and it is then used to pay the worker and bill the client.; Timesheets in Vextron
Nil return: A timesheet that deliberately says ‘I didn’t work this period’, so that the reminders to send one stop.
Pay and bill · also pay/bill: The whole job of turning approved hours into both a payment to the worker and an invoice to the client.
Time capture · also capture: How hours get recorded: confirming a schedule that is already filled in, entering start and finish times, counting days or half-days, or clocking in and out.
Rules engine · also interpretation: The part of a pay and bill system that turns raw hours into priced pay and bill lines, by applying the rules for overtime, premiums, breaks and rounding.
Verification · also proofing: The agency’s own check of a timesheet after the client has approved it and before any money moves.
Deemed approval: A rule that treats a timesheet as approved if the client does not respond within an agreed time.
Adjustment: A correction made after the event by adding a new entry that reverses the original, rather than by editing it. The original stays as it was, so the history is intact.
Export batch: The packaged file of pay or billing figures sent to payroll or accounts. It carries control totals (totals checked at both ends) so nothing goes missing unnoticed.

UK compliance terms

AWR (Agency Workers Regulations 2010) · also week 12 clock, parity clock: After 12 qualifying weeks in the same role with the same hirer, an agency worker is entitled to the same basic pay and conditions as someone employed directly to do the same job. The count towards this is often called the ‘week 12 clock’ or ‘parity clock’.
Working Time Regulations · also WTR, Working Time Directive, WTD: The limits on working hours: a 48-hour weekly average, rest breaks and paid annual leave. Most workers can opt out of the 48-hour average in writing, but not all.
National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage · also NMW, NLW: The legal minimum hourly rates of pay. Whether pay meets them is tested on pay after certain deductions, not only on the headline rate.
IR35 · also off-payroll working: The rules that decide whether a contractor working through their own limited company should be taxed as if they were an employee.
Status Determination Statement · also SDS: The written conclusion of an IR35 assessment. The rules require it to be passed down the supply chain.
Umbrella company · also umbrella: A business that employs temporary workers and handles their tax and National Insurance through PAYE, sitting between the agency and the worker.
Joint and several liability · also JSL: A change in UK law, in force from 6 April 2026, that makes agencies liable for PAYE failures by the umbrella companies they use.
Key Information Document · also KID: A document a UK agency is required to give a work-seeker before terms are agreed, setting out how they will be paid and by whom.
Conduct Regulations: The rules governing employment agencies and employment businesses in the UK. They include the rule that a temp is paid for hours worked whether or not the client has signed the timesheet.
Right to work · also RTW: The legally required check that someone is allowed to work in the UK.
DBS check · also DBS: A criminal-record check, required for many roles, particularly in healthcare and education. DBS stands for the Disclosure and Barring Service, which issues it.
PAYE · also Pay As You Earn: Pay As You Earn: the system employers use to take income tax and National Insurance from pay.
RTI (Real Time Information) · also RTI: The payroll reports employers send to HMRC (the UK tax authority) on or before each payday.
Auto-enrolment · also AE: The legal duty on employers to enrol eligible workers into a workplace pension.
SSP and SMP · also statutory sick pay, statutory maternity pay: Statutory Sick Pay and Statutory Maternity Pay: the pay set by law for time off sick and for maternity leave.
TOIL · also time off in lieu: Time off in lieu: extra hours banked as time off instead of being paid.
Rolled-up holiday pay: Holiday pay paid as an extra amount on each payment, shown separately, instead of when the leave is taken. Common in daily supply work.
STPCD (School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document) · also STPCD: The document that sets teachers’ pay scales, and so the basis for the day rates that education supply work is priced from.

Terms used in Vextron

Temps Hub: Vextron’s shift rota and booking screen: where the temp desk sees the week’s shifts, offers them and books workers.; Temp staffing in Vextron
Flynn: Vextron’s AI assistant. Its suggestions and briefings are gathered in Flynn Hub.; AI in Vextron
Flynn Hub: The place in Vextron where Flynn’s suggestions, briefings and the items you chose to ignore are kept.
Portal: In Vextron, a branded online space for the agency’s workers and another for its clients: two audiences, one system.; Portals in Vextron
Coins: In Vextron, the points recruiters earn, for example for hitting targets, and spend on rewards their agency sets up in the reward shop.; Team motivation in Vextron
Merge tag: A placeholder in a message template that is filled in from a record, such as a candidate’s first name. Vextron refuses to send a message if any of its merge tags could not be filled.

Book a demo

Vextron is in early access.

Placeholder: the demo request form goes here.